Weird Printer Issue

I have one heck of a flaky situation. First, about two weeks ago I
connected a PC printer in our warehouse manager's office to our System i
(V5R1) via PC5250 printer emulation. Worked great - until yesterday.



The reports, documents, etc., for the two girls in the office started
printing to this new printer (BB), even though the OCL or CL explicitly
referenced a different printer. I even changed a procedure so that the
report (a one-pager) would be put on Hold. The @#$% thing not only went to
BB even though P6 was explicitly defined, but it was released. I ran the
same procedure from my workstation and everything was cool.



I had a few more scenarios that I wanted to run through today, but we had a
disk drive reporting as failed when I got in this morning. Thought that
might have priority over my silly little problem.



After the system came back up, miraculously, the girls reports, checks,
etc., went to the correct printer. HOWEVER, the warehouse manager's stuff
that should go to P7 (his twinax line printer) now wanted to go to BB. But,
when I was logged in at his terminal (twinax), the documents printed on P7
without a hitch.



Okay, I admit to being throughly confused, but it gets better/worse. I
stopped his printer emulation of BB, completely closed the emulation session
(X-ed it out), restarted the BB emulation session from ground zero (the
icon) - and everything for everybody is printing where it is supposed to.
Which makes everyone ecstatic.



Except me. I don't know what started this, nor when/if it will rear its
ugly head. I had planned to test out various combinations of workstations :
user profiles to try to narrow down the problem at least somewhat.



I did think about the out queues, and the correct out queue was assigned to
the correct device. That wouldn't have explained the weirdness anyway.



I can't even test out any suggestions since things are (apparently) working
now. But for future reference, when it happens again, has anyone seen
anything like this before and/or got clue(s) what to look for the next time
it happens (cause I know it will - and at the worst possible time).



Thanks.



Jerry C. Adams

IBM i Programmer/Analyst

Honest businessmen should be protected from the unscrupulous consumer. -
Lester Maddox

--

A&K Wholesale

Murfreesboro, TN

615-867-5070